The world’s first hand-transplant patient is in danger of losing the hand – a grim possibility that hits New Jersey paramedic Matt Scott especially hard.

Just four months after Clint Hallam of New Zealand became a pioneering transplant patient in September 1998, Scott, 39, received a left-hand transplant at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky. – the first such operation in the United States.

Scott, who is now clinical coordinator of Virtua Health’s mobile intensive-care unit in Camden County, N.J., said: “I feel terrible for Mr. Hallam. I truly hope the best for him.

“We have never spoken,” added Scott. “And I’m kind of sad about that. But every time I hear a story about him, I think about him. Actually, I think about him quite often.

“He was the person I looked to for what would happen to me.”

A spokesman for the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia, said yesterday the 49-year-old Hallam was given drugs to combat rejection of the hand transplant.

In a groundbreaking operation in Lyon, France, in September 1998, an international team of surgeons attached the right hand and forearm of a brain-dead motorcyclist to Hallam’s upper arm.

He has been scolded by his doctors in the past for not sticking to drug treatment and physical-therapy regimes needed to insure the transplant’s success.

One of Scott’s physicians, Dr. Warren Breidenbach, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Louisville, was concerned by Hallam’s situation.

“It’s not good that [a rejection] happens, but in many cases it can be controlled and stopped,” he added. “Mr. Scott has had three rejection episodes in the first year and all were successfully treated.”

Scott received his transplanted hand Jan. 25, 1999. His last rejection “episode” was in August.